


Maria

by edourado



Series: Hell's Kitchen Chronicles [99]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edourado/pseuds/edourado
Summary: My take on the "“Frank can’t love anyone because he still loves his wife” argument.





	Maria

He’s lying on his stomach, his arm resting over her, across her belly, his head resting on her shoulder. Her fingertips are drawing nonsensical patterns on his bicep. **  
**

“Do you think she’d hate me?” she asks, voice calm and low, and he turns his head to look at her.

“Who?”

Karen turns to him, and he doesn’t like the look on her face.

“Maria.”

It’s a shock. He only ever heard her saying his wife’s name during his trial, while they prepped his case, back when he didn’t love her, when they didn’t love each other.

It’s not like they don’t talk about his family. She lets him talk about them as much as he wants, asks follow up questions, laughs at his stories, cries for them, sometimes.

But she doesn’t really say their names. Especially not Maria’s.

Moving to lie on his side, he looks at her.

“What?”

She sighs, an apprehensive expression on her face.

“I’ve been thinking about her”, she confesses, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t know how much of this I believe, but… Do you think- If she’s… If she can see, could see us… Do you think she’d hate me?”

It’s a question that had kept him up a night or two, after he realized just how much Karen Page meant to him, means to him, before they took that step, and after, once, twice. Sometimes.

And it boils down, he thinks, to the fact that he can sleep through the night again.

They’re still there, all of them, all around the city, in every corner of his memory, ever present, but he sleeps, now. And when he dreams of them - of her - it’s not him pulling the trigger anymore. When he wakes up, his kids’ laughter echoes and his wife’s smiles linger.

Most of the times.

But he sleeps. More and more often with Karen by his side.

“No”, he says, and finds he really means it.

“Yeah?” She confirms, and there they are, those tears in her eyes. “You don’t think she-”

“No”, he interrupts, hand on her face while she cries silently. “Hey. She wouldn’t.”

Karen sniffs.

“How do you know? I’m sleeping with her husband.”

Frank takes a minute to think, choosing his words.

“Maria was this… Fierce woman, you know? She used to drive her mother crazy with the kind of shit she’d talk about. Like how she should have divorced her father before he died, because they weren’t really in love anymore, and now she felt guilty about meeting new men and if she would like to be a widow forever.”

Wiping another tear, Karen raises her brows.

“She was very emotion driven, but she was adamant about the idea that people should be happy.”

Leaning in, he pulls her to him and runs a hand on her back.

“You make me happy”. A timid arm stretches from between them to hug him back. “I thought I’d die trying to get justice for them. Accepted it the minute I decided to do it.”

“You almost did”, she says, eyes down again. “A few times.”

“Yeah. You brought me back, though.”

He never told her about that request, the outstretched hand, the let’s go home and the overwhelming urge to say yes, and just go.

“I’m here. And I’m happy. I never, ever thought I’d be able to say that again, but I am. ‘Cause of you.”

She looks at him and then down again, fresh tears spilling.

“She would not hate you, Karen. I’m alive because of you. I can remember them because of you. I can still love them because of you.” He tugs her face up to look at him. “I’m able to love them because I love you. And, because of that, she would not hate you.”

Blinking, she sniffs and moves to snuggle against him.

Maria would be remembered before he fell asleep again. She would be remembered before he had breakfast the next morning. And maybe he would even dream of her face while he slept.

But he would sleep, and the memory of his wife would let him.

Because he’s happy.


End file.
